Gabriel Kuri and Francis Alÿs look at the ordinary

Museum And Gallery

Who are you?

"Identy Construction" at G-A-S-P, "Sensorium II" at MIT, "Traveling Scholars" at the MFA

By RANDI HOPKINS | January 30, 2007

Jack Schneider, Black Sabbath

I’d hazard that when most of us think of pictures with “hidden meanings,” we don’t envision portraits, a genre that usually entails straight-ahead representations of, well, heads, at least. But it is the mysteries and the ambiguities of images of identity that unite the 12 artists of “WE ARE WHERE WE ARE NOT,” which is curated by participating artist Jason Kalogiros and will open at Brookline’s G-A-S-P on February 9. In his press release, Kalogiros reveals that he’s interested not only in “the way in which people, places, objects, and time all inform each other in complex and layered ways” but also in the ambiguities of time and the effects of the past on the present. He goes on: “As firmly rooted in a present moment or place as someone or something seems, they always carry with them the residue of the past.” Luke Butler’s œuvre includes moody portraits of the late president Gerald Ford and actor William Shatner. Andrew Tosiello borrows forms from the past to explore people from the present, as in his series “25 Silhouette Portraits of Italian-American Mobsters.” Jack Schneider makes engaging interventions into media that found their way into his hands from the entertainment arena.

It’s not “who we are” but “how we know it” that fuels the investigation in Part II of “SENSORIUM: EMBODIED EXPERIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND CONTEMPORARY ART,” which opens at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center on February 8. If Part I was any indication, you can expect a full-body experience here — curators Bill Arning, Jane Farver, Yuko Hasegawa, and Marjory Jacobson bring together an international group of artists to address the influence of technology on the senses. Among the sensations at this show: Natascha Sadr Haghighian’s Singing Microscope, which mixes hearing with vision in a “look” at scientists’ desire to view the mysteries of the universe; Christian Jankowski’s vision of love and the chat room; the inflatable tearoom of architect François Roche and team R&Sie(n).

This year’s “SMFA TRAVELING SCHOLARS” opens at the Museum of Fine Arts on February 10 with work by School of the Museum of Fine Arts graduates Bethany Bristow, N. Sean Glover, Audrey Goldstein, Aric Mannion, and Asuka Ohsawa, each of whom received one of the prestigious travel scholarships awarded annually by the SMFA to a juried group of alumni and participants in its Fifth Year Program. Works range from Bristow’s large-scale color photographs documenting her travels and her sculptural interventions in visited sites to Goldstein’s complex machines to Ohsawa’s humorous gouache riffs on classical Japanese art forms.

On the Web
G-A-S-P: www397.pair.com/gasp1
List Visual Art Center:http://web.mit.edu/lvac
Museum of Fine Arts: www.smfa.edu

Coming to your senses
This heady, two-part exhibition examines the influence of technology on the experiences our bodies are having in this world.
Gods and monsters — and David Hasselhoff
The Museum of Fine Arts did big things with Napoleon and Edward Hopper, pictures of prostitutes graced the walls of Boston’s two biggest art museums, and all hell broke loose when the Mooninites invaded.
Return to the edge of the world
Photography and new media loom large on the horizon in 2007, with cameras pointed in every direction.
Dollhouses and dream states
Autumn highlights in the museums and the galleries.
Bodies and souls
Preserved flayed corpses at the Museum of Science, Americans in Paris at the Museum of Fine Arts, underground art at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, beavers at Mass College of Art — it was that kind of year, capped off by the arrival of the new Institute of Contemporary Art.
Going deep
A gaggle of big solo shows share the art waves with that powerful influx of computer-reliant art known as the Boston Cyberarts Festival this season.
Our town
After living through decades of Big Dig construction and disruption, the average Bostonian has developed a keener design knowledge and sensitivity.
Touchy feely
Art-world sophisticates are schooled not to hunt for hidden pictures in abstract paintings, but that’s just what Cecily Brown encourages.
Holiday, it would be so nice!
The Museum of Fine Arts offers a full-out festive immersion approach to the impending holidays this year — a line of attack that, in keeping with the contemporary spirit of art, embraces performing arts, multimedia, and site-specific.
Break on through (to the other side)
Rachel Perry Welty sees art where many of us see annoying little things to be thrown away or deleted: the funny-shaped plastic tabs cleverly invented to close the bag around a loaf of bread; the identifying stickers found on most fruit; answering-machine messages left at wrong numbers.
The devil in the details
It’s hard to imagine stopping to look at drawings that don’t coalesce till you let them pull you in and spin you around a bit.
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